Administered by:

Purpose of this program:

(1) Discover, isolate, and evaluate preclinically, agents from natural sources to treat or prevent cancer, infectious diseases including AIDS, cardiovascular diseases, mental disorders, and other diseases or medical conditions of primary concern to developing countries. (2) Undertake inventories of biological diversity and develop collection practices compatible with conserving biodiversity, and produce documentation of all collected material in the form of museum catalogues, published works, and/or databases, reporting specific locality and all features of biology relevant to standard botanical and zoological collections; assure accessibility of inventory data to all individuals, including those not associated with the International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups (ICBG), by housing catalogues and databases in public institutions (such as universities and national museums) and, when databases are kept on computer systems in private institutions, by including in publications specific references to these data bases. (3) Support research training targeted toward the needs of the developing country or other countries represented within the Group and related to the scope of work of the Request for Applications (RFA), and to augment field experience and training of U.S. scientists in areas of knowledge unique to the developing country. Examples of relevant areas of training could include systematics, ethnobiology, ethnomedicine, chemistry, cell biology, biotechnology, or production methods and quality control in pharmaceutical development.